Kathryn Kolb’s teaching a workshop April 1-3rd at Sapelo Island for every level of photographic enthusiast. More info can be seen on serenbephotographycenter.com

Photojournalist Tom England is teaching “Train Your Vision for Better Photos – Your Camera Will Follow” on April 9th. Details on serenbephotographycenter.com

Homegrown: The Paideia School Auction will be held this Saturday, March 19th at Puritan Mill. Information about the event, purchasing tickets, and the auction items can be found here.

PRIVATE TOUR OF SANDOR FAMILY ART COLLECTION, CHICAGO A private viewing of possibly the nation’s most impressive historic photography collection, the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection, featuring site visits to the Sandor’s Chicago residence, office and art studio. The private tour for four to six people includes luncheons at The Arts Club of Chicago and the renowned Terzo Piano restaurant at The Art Institute of Chicago. Paideia grandparents Richard and Ellen Sandor have been collecting photography, outsider art and new media for over 30 years, amassing over 2,000 works spanning the 1840′s to the present. The Sandors were listed in “Art and Antiques” as one of “America’s Top 100 Private Collectors,” with works that include Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus, Alfred Stieglitz, Irving Penn, Kara Walker, Richard Avedon, Man Ray, Edward Steichen and many more. A rare opportunity for the art history aficionado! Includes two rooms for one night at the Sax Chicago, a boutique hotel located in the heart of downtown. Choose weekend or weekdays for one or two days’ viewing. Travel not included.

DONORS: ELLEN & RICHARD SANDOR, PENYA & ERIC TAUB, TURNER BROADCASTING

Anyone with questions or wanting further information may call the auction chair, Priscilla Heffelfinger- priscilla.heffelfinger@gmail.com or 678-575-8595.

Any interested bidders may directly contact Jiffy Page, the Paideia Board of Trustees’ Auction Representative-
jennifer-page@comcast.net

There’s a been a positive groundswell of support from the photographic community regarding the disaster in Japan. A Facebook group emerged to organize the sale of prints (online and off) to benefit Direct Relief International (www.directrelief.org) and Habitat for Humanity Japan (www.habitatjp.org).

Jennifer Schwartz Gallery will be hosting a silent auction of photographic prints to benefit these two organizations on Saturday. Please see the gallery’s post for times and instructions on how to contribute. The event will take place during the West Side Art’s District Art Walk.

“If you want to participate in the silent auction you will need to get an exhibition ready piece to the gallery by no later than Friday March 18th by 5pm. The gallery’s new location is:

1000 Marietta Street St.
Suite 112
Atlanta, GA 30318

Additionally, we will need a web sized .jpg (72dpi 1000px at the long edge) to be sent ASAP. Please include all information needed for the piece (artist name, title, year, edition, size, suggested starting price for the auction) Please be reasonable with the size of pieces (nothing larger than 50×50), as we will need wall space to display everyone’s work. Framed pieces are preferred, but since its a rush as long as it is “exhibition quality” it should be ok. All proceeds are going to Direct Relief International, www.directrelief.org.

Please send all submissions for the Silent Auction to Ryan Nabulsi at ryan@jenniferschwartzgallery.com

Definitely take a minute to peruse the programming for the Society for Photographic Educators National Conference, held in Atlanta this year. The keynote from Abelardo Morell is tonight (Thurs.) and there are conference passes available to the public and students.

Studio is located behind Sardis Methodist Church. Open Sunday March 27 from 11 am to 6pm.

It’s always great to see exhibitions that leverage photography’s strength alongside another art form, like poetry, and the current show in Arnall Golden Gregory’s exhibition space (open through April 1st) takes its name from poet Adrienne Rich‘s book from 1978, “Dream of a Common Language“.

The exhibition is part of a three-year partnership between AGG and Hammonds House, and features work from Sheila Pree Bright, Lucinda Bunnen, Lynn Cymone, Doris Derby, Kathryn Kolb, Lynn Marshall-Linnemeir, Sue Ross and Angela West. The exhibition is a curatorial collaboration between Anne Lambert Tracht from AGG and Kevin Sipp from Hammonds House.

Kevin Sipp remarked that the Rich book (and poem) was a personal favorite, and just as Rich is focused on “women’s perspectives of work and art”, the pieces within the exhibition reflect Rich’s general inspiration.

From AGG:

“The art exhibit, entitled “Dream of a Common Language,” will feature a selection of work by female photographers, and is inspired by renowned poet and essayist Adrienne Rich’s poem of the same title, which explores the universal themes of sisterhood and the common language of self-discovery, love and achievement. The exhibit is presented in partnership with the Hammonds House Museum, located in Atlanta’s West End.

More information on agg.com

On behalf of Sidewalk Radio and Oakland Cemetery, we want to thank all of you who entered the Cell-Phone Photo Contest. Here are the winners, in no particular order!

Carrie Shetler Clark- My Wife

iPhone 3GS on 02.01.2011 – Processed with Picture Show

Rachel Barnhart – Within the Gates

iPhone 4 on 01.31.2011 – Processed with Hipstamatic

Peggy McKinney – Naomi 2

iPhone on 01.31.2011 – Processed with Hipstamatic

Thanks again for participating!

On ArtsCriticAtl.com

“As a young artist, he quickly grasped that the act of removing things from their context and putting them into unexpected relations is not incidental but fundamental to photographic imagination and — as he would spend the better part of his career investigating in his journalism — what we call knowledge by way of photographs. He understood as well as any photographer ever has that photography is a non-literal art with an extraordinary capacity to ventriloquize the literal, an indirect art masked in directness, a circumstantial art of contingent truths passing as necessary truths and vice versa.”

[Video] John Lehr Artist Talk at Hagedorn from Art Relish

This, from Carla Plouin:

“Last week, along with 110 other people, I walked the 1st of 4 Saturdays of Beltline walks. This was a wonderful urban walk (7 miles) and incredible opportunity for depicting the city from a very unusual vintage point. A place that will change over the years, since it is being enlarged/paved/civilized, etc.,. in a nutshell, a great photo wonderland.

The paths are there to be walked/hiked/biked, anytime, but these Saturday gatherings are wonderful (free!) as some of the Beltline volunteers explained the various phases of development, types of buildings, etc., in addition to showing the way to usual shortcuts and ways in the city.

I am just a photo-enthusiast that loves urban photography and saw too good of an opportunity not to share the love.

Their Facebook page and their website.

The walk will be from the Inman Park to the West End Marta station, 6 1/2 miles starting at 10am. Saturday January 29, 2011.

The weather forecast for Saturday is 59 and Sunny. There is one bathroom stop at the Drip coffee shop at Glenwood Park. Feel free to email or call 404-892-8306 if you have any question.

The last 2 walks will be:

* Saturday, February 5, 2011 – meet at the West End MARTA station at 10 a.m. and walk to the Bankhead MARTA station
* Saturday, February 12, 2011 – meet at the Bankhead MARTA station at 10 a.m. and walk to the Lindbergh MARTA station”

Thanks, Carla!

Wendy Given – Turn Your Back to the Forest, Your Front to Me
January 14 – February 26, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, January 14 | 7 – 10 pm
Conversation with the Artist: Saturday, January 15 | 4 pm

“Whitespace is pleased to present “Turn Your Back to the Forest, Your Front to Me,” a photography exhibit by Wendy Given. Given’s photographs are constructed to introduce a contemporary narrative directed by centuries of folklore and legend-ultimately depicting the fine, delicate line between realism and imagination. Given is keenly interested in observing and documenting the otherworldly-or seemingly supernatural- in the everyday experience, realizing an ongoing fascination with myth and magic.”

whitespace | 814 Edgewood Ave | Atlanta, GA 30307 | 404.688.1892
Gallery Hours | Wed – Sat | 11 am – 5 pm
whitespace814.com | whitespace814.blogspot.com

There’s a new photo-portfolio web-publication which is focusing on Southern photographers. Check them out at One One Thousand.

Young, Foxy & Free, an Athens-based publication featuring artists, designers, and all things young, foxy and free, is having a launch party for their 2011 Calendar at Octane Coffee on Thursday night. Their last edition was in 3D!

YOUNG, FOXY & FREE LAUNCH PARTY
Thursday, December 16, 9:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m.
Come celebrate the release of the YFF winter 2011 calendar issue featuring 13 different Atlanta artists. Dance to DJ Bradford Cox and kick back at Octane (Westside). The new free quarterly magazine brings together creative movers and shakers… and that includes you. (via scoutmob)

Atlanta photographer Liz Von Hoene has a holiday-themed shoot for Target that’s currently visible in Times Square, New York City. (Liz’s studio is hosting Thursday’s lecture and slide show from Mark Steinmetz!)

HIGH MUSEUM OF ART APPOINTS BRETT ABBOTT AS NEW CURATOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

ATLANTA, December 2, 2010 – Michael E. Shapiro, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Director of the High Museum of Art, today announced the appointment of Brett Abbott as the Museum’s new curator of photography. Abbott currently serves as associate curator in the department of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and will join the High on April 1, 2011. As curator of photography Abbott will be responsible for the High’s growing collection of more than 4,000 prints, with notable examples of every photographic genre and process as well as many of the masters in the field, including George N. Barnard, Julia Margaret Cameron, Walker Evans, Richard Misrach, Emmet Gowin and Sally Mann.

“In addition to his extensive knowledge of the history of photography and exciting repertoire of recent scholarship, Brett brings a fresh and energetic perspective to our curatorial team,” said David Brenneman, the High’s Director of Collections and Exhibitions. “We look forward to welcoming him to the High and his stewardship of the museum’s robust photography collection, as well as introducing him to Atlanta’s thriving photography community.”

A member of the curatorial staff at the J. Paul Getty Museum since 2002, Abbott has been integral in managing the museum’s important collection of photographs, including mounting exhibitions, researching and publishing the collection and building the holdings through acquisitions and gifts. He recently received the 2010 Lucie Award for Curator/Exhibition of the Year for his organization of the exhibition and its related publication “Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography since the Sixties,” the Getty’s highest-attended photography exhibition to date. Abbott also received the 2007 Lucie Award for Curator/Exhibition of the Year for “Edward Weston: Enduring Vision” and edited its companion publication, “Edward Weston’s Book of Nudes.”

The High began collecting photography in 1974 and has recently amassed the nation’s most comprehensive collection of civil rights-era photography with works by Ernest C. Withers, Danny Lyon, Bruce Davidson, Bob Adelman and others. The collection also includes large-scale prints by prominent contemporary artists such as Thomas Struth, Taryn Simon, Vik Muniz and Jeff Wall.

“It is a wonderful honor to be joining the High’s talented and innovative team and to be welcomed into Atlanta’s thriving arts community,” said Abbott. “The High has made significant contributions to the study of photography. I’m excited to be charged with building the collection in ways that will further distinguish it on the national level, while harnessing its resources for local arts education and outreach. To that end, I’m eager to begin working with the Museum’s supporters toward developing a vibrant roster of acquisitions and exhibitions that contributes to the field and inspires the community.”

Abbott received his Master of Arts in art history from Williams College in 2002 and his Bachelor of Arts in the same field from Stanford University in 2000. Prior to his current position, Abbott served as a curatorial intern in the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2001), where he conducted research for the bibliography and introductory essay of Sarah Greenough’s “Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs.” Abbott has also held roles at the Williams College Museum of Art (2000–2001) and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (1999).

From Chad Radford’s Oraien Catledge Photographs looks beyond Cabbagetown on Creative Loafing.

“His childhood spent in Mississippi, his background working with impoverished people for the American Foundation for the Blind, as well as his own fading eyesight all contribute to Catledge’s character and his work. All of these elements are underscored by his close attention to his subjects’ faces, which mirror the rich details of the crumbling landscape. And being such an insular community, Catledge had to gain these people’s trust, which you can see in every one of his photos — be it a pair of hooligans on the street, a tired young mother smoking a cigarette on her porch, or the myriad children running wild on the street. They were all part of the landscape that accepted Catledge and his camera into the community.”

Michael Schmelling has spent the last three years in Atlanta photographing the hip-hop scene, and the resulting book from his efforts will be released Nov. 1st. Check out the WSJ’s “A Photographer Aims to Document the Atlanta Music Scene” interview with Schmelling.

“From Polaroid to Photoshop”

Lluis Barba
Parish Kohanim
Robert Mapplethorpe
Steve McCurry
Jean-Francois Rauzier
Kate Simon
Mike and Doug Starn
Joyce Tenneson

Opening Friday October 22, 2010
7-9 pm
Joyce Tenneson will give an informal gallery talk at 8 pm
Besharat Gallery
175 Peters St
Atlanta, GA 30303

Exhibition continues through November 27, 2010
Gallery hours are Wed – Sat 11-7pm
Sun 12-6 pm or by appointment

Atlanta Photography Exhibit has been bringing a great group show to Big House Gallery for the past few years, and Traci Browning is a participating artist in this year’s installment.

“12 black and white film images inspired by receiving the gift of my Dad’s Agfa camera three years after cancer took his life. Dad bought it in the ’50s as a young soldier overseas then shipped it home to his older sister, who shared the camera after finding it again in 2008. It arrived with a partially used roll of Kodachrome II color slide film inside. In July, my husband, our 2 dogs, the cat and I took a 5,007 mile roadtrip to hand-deliver the film to a lab specializing in discontinued film.

In 2005 I had invited Mom and Dad to take an extended trip along the California coastline with me but his cancer answered for us with a firm “no”. Mom and I took the trip this April with the Agfa in tow. These intimately-sized photographs are taken from both of these trips. “

© Traci Browning